ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the somewhat hidden mechanisms that give China's peasant agriculture its strength, resilience and dynamics. It explores these mechanisms allows to develop a more realistic view on how peasant agriculture might unfold elsewhere. China's agriculture is overwhelmingly dependent upon the peasantry and the country's food supply critically depends on this multitude. In this respect the potential of peasant agriculture clearly shines through. In 1978, one year before the rebellion, a small group of 18 peasants from Xiaogang village in Anhui province, agreed that they could no longer continue working under the commune system, which degraded them and only produced hunger. The growth in China's agriculture has been accompanied by an impressive reduction in poverty, which again is in remarkable contrast with what has happened in sub-Saharan Africa. Chinese labour migrants, by contrast, are part of an immense and often complex flow that goes from the countryside to the 'global factory' and returns back to the countryside.
